…which is how we came to spend four hours in the ER at Waldo County Hospital the other evening. It wasn’t our first visit there, not by a long shot. It wasn’t even our first visit this month. And that may have led to my symptoms.

            Has anyone missed the campaign to make us all aware that a woman experiences heart attack symptoms differently than a man? That the classic signs of chest pressure or pain, nausea, or left arm pain may not be present at all? If you watch TV these days you’ve seen the ad of a busy, competent woman soldiering through her day only to suddenly collapse in a heap on the floor. No recognizable heart symptoms, just… dead. We’re told a woman might have pain in her back, pain in her neck, jaw, either arm, stomach pain, lightheadedness, etc. Look it up.

            I’d been having just about all those symptoms over a few days. They’d come and go, but always came back. My PCP (primary care provider) suggested I stop a new blood pressure medication for a few days, but, she continued, if I started having chest pains, head for the ER. By then I couldn’t have said what I was feeling, but I knew it wasn’t good. Follow your instincts, I told myself. “Let’s go up to Waldo,” I said to Wally.

            The place was packed. People hacking and coughing into their masks, anxious family groups trying to make small talk. It looked like we’d have a long, long wait. But at mention of my symptoms, I was quickly led inside. Looking back, I realize I never said “I think I’m having a heart attack,” but rather listed my symptoms — back pain, neck pain, lightheadedness, etc. — and let them tell me. “Let’s get you in; we don’t want you having a heart attack,” said the registrar. Ah, she thought so, too.

            In minutes I was hooked up to the EKG machine. My first time, I told the technician, who expressed surprise.

“Really? How old are you?” he asked.

Then came a heart monitor machine and blood work. Meanwhile, as nurses came and went, we learned this wasn’t just a busy night at Waldo, but all over the state. There were 50 people in the waiting room at Eastern Maine’s ER, they said, and 100 at Maine Med.

            “If you’ve got the flu, don’t come in here,” one said. “Stay home, drink fluids and go to bed. We can’t do anything for you.”

            Turns out, there wasn’t anything they could do for me either. All my heart tests were normal. I was feeling better by the minute. I wasn’t dying. I could go home to my glass of wine and my dinner.

            I can’t remember where we found it, but I know we paid $15 for it and thought it a bargain. An old, hand-cranked cream separator. It must have been sometime in the late 1970s; we’d had a cow (her name was Molly, our first cow) for a few years and had been on the look-out for a separator for some time.

            The thing consisted of a very heavy base with a crank, and a number of galvanized steel parts and pieces, including an odd wrench, a long safety-pin like device, a very heavy metal cone-thing, two big spouts, a bowl and a stopper. No instruction book. How on earth did we figure things out before Google?

              I cleaned it up, added fresh oil to the well in the base, fitted the pieces together in what seemed a logical sequence and poured a bucket of warm milk into the bowl. That much looked obvious. And actually, it did look exactly like the cream separator I’d been studying from afar every summer at the Union Fair. One of our favorite Fair stops (ours, not our little boys’) was the Mathews Farm Museum with its wonderful display of 19 th century agricultural and home-making implements. I lusted after many of them, as we were re-creating that life-style of handwork at our place.

            So, now I had my own. I turned the crank and the heavy cone-like thing spun faster and faster. It must have something to do with centrifugal force, I thought, though I had only the vaguest idea what that meant. And sure enough, the heavier cream began pouring out of the top spout, thrown up by the speed of the turning cone, and the lighter skim came out the bottom spout. But for some reason, both cream and milk had chunks of stuff floating in them, dirty chunks of stuff. Disappointed, I threw it all to the pigs and scrubbed every piece clean. The next bucket of milk came out the same way.

            Over the next couple of years, every once in a while, I’d try again. Maybe, somehow, it would work. Then one day someone, I forget who, walked into my kitchen, spotted the separator and said “How do you like washing all those disks? Disks? What disks? And the guy proceeded to take the strange wrench and fit it on to the top of that odd cone, and, voila!, opened it up. Inside were some 20 thin, metal disks, caked with old clotted, sour milk, the inner workings of my cream separator. Oh, and that funny, large safety pin held them all so they could hang over the wood stove and dry.

Seems like Midcoast Solid Waste, aka the Dump, is in the news these days. MCSWC, made up of four towns — Camden, Rockport, Lincolnville and Hope — faces the decision of where to send our waste when their contract with Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC) expires in 2018. Jim Guerra, manager of MCSWC, will shed light on this and more in a talk at the Lincolnville Community Library on Wednesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. Jim, with some 30 years experience in solid waste management and recycling, has been the manager of the Rockport facility since 2008.

“Where do all those piles of newspapers go once you drop them at the transfer station? How about yogurt containers, glass jars and tin cans? And what happens to all the other trash?” Jim will answer these and other questions about waste stream management and recycling at the Rockport facility, as well as share MCSWC’s recommendation for which of four firms, in the running to take over the PERC contract, has been deemed the most cost effective and environmentally sound.

            The second half of our property taxes (if you pay in two installments) is due in the Town Office by the close of business on Wednesday, April 6; i.e. 5 p.m. Pay by then to avoid interest charges.

March Students’ of the Month are: Kindergarten, Maia Andrews and Catherine Leadbetter; First Grade, Will Pendleton; Second Grade, Colby Joy and Patience Marr; Third Grade, Iain Larsen-Leavins and Emmaline Walker; Fourth Grade, Chloe Day-Lynch and Preston Rossiter; Fifth Grade, Skyler Joy; Sixth Grade, Lizzy Larsen-Leavins; Seventh Grade, Lydia Thompson; and Eighth Grade, Braden Moulton. Congratulations to all!

            Last week I mentioned that my dad’s hat still hangs (or, rather is nailed) to the coat rack in our kitchen. That brought a surprising number of responses, including this one from Arlene Jurewicz Leighton: